What we take for virtue is often but an assemblage of various ambitions and activities that chance, or our own astuteness, have arranged in a certain manner; and it is not always out of courage or purity that men are brave, and women chaste.

It is a species of coquetry to make a parade of never practising it.

Avarice misapprehends itself almost always. There is no passion which more often will miss its aim, nor upon which the present has so much influence to the prejudice of the future.

When our vices desert us, we flatter ourselves that we are deserting our vices.

Whatever discoveries we may have made in the regions of self-love, there still remain many unknown lands.

Jealousy is nothing more than a fear of abandonment

Idleness and fear keeps us in the path of duty, but our virtue often gets the praise.